Crystal Mason: Texas woman sentenced to five years over voting error acquitted
Crystal Mason: Texas woman sentenced to five years over voting error acquitted
Appeals court rules Mason, now 49, did not know she was ineligible when she voted in 2016 and throws out conviction
Correct me if I'm wrong, but 5 years seems way too high for voting when you're not allowed to. There's real criminals out there with less jail time. If anything, a fine or some community service would've done it.
Seeing as how that dude from Florida got a 5k fine for 9 times the votes, yeah this is extreme
No citizen should have the right to vote taken away, ever, for any reason.
You’re not wrong. The penalties are wildly out of touch with reality because the issue is wildly out of touch with reality, for two reasons.
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Post-Trump, Republicans need to make voting penalties harsh because it creates the impression that it’s a real issue that needs to be tackled, instead of what it actually is, a statistical aberration. Then when they cry fraud about any election they lose, they can point to these cases to act like it’s a real thing.
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The pre-Trump reason, it creates a chilling effect on voting among the most at risk and the least educated. Now anyone who reads this article and even theoretically might be voting illegally because of a prior conviction, will simply not vote as it’s safer. Those voters are more likely to be poor, black, or from cities, which are all groups more likely to vote Democrat.
It’s classic voter disenfranchisement, goes hand in hand with tough voter ID laws, gerrymandering and rolls purges. The goal is simply to have less people voting and for their vote to mean less, because less voter turnout means less Democrat votes.
Remember this when people try to make you apathetic about your vote. If it really didn’t mean anything, they wouldn’t try so hard to stop you.
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You're not wrong, and you're not racist.
Now - try it again, this time in Texas.
But you haven't considered yet that she's non white and not rich, that's always something they consider when issuing prison sentences.
The GOP fuck who voted nine times got probation. But all those eight extra votes were votes he thought were legitimate, so it’s fine.
Many saw it as a thinly veiled effort to intimidate Black voters.
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat? Nooooooooooooooooooo. No, no. Clearly Texas judge Reuben Gonzales Jr. was simply following the law damning a black woman to prison for five years because she was told she could vote provisionally.
The story yesterday about the Georgia Republican who knowingly illegally voted NINE TIMES and received a handshake and a copy of the home game is just a feel-good story they put in there to distract from the important things like stock market and how old Biden is.
Congratulations to my adopted home state for managing to not be a complete embarrassment for five fucking minutes.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Mason, now 49, attempted to vote in Fort Worth in the 2016 even though she was ineligible because she was still on supervised release – which is like probation – for a tax felony.
Justice Wade Birdwell wrote for the court in its Thursday ruling: “We conclude that the quantum of the evidence presented in this case is insufficient to support the conclusion that Mason actually realized that she voted knowing that she was ineligible to do so and, therefore, insufficient to support her conviction for illegal voting.”
Mason, who has remained out of prison on an appeal bond, said in a telephone interview on Thursday evening that she received the news while going through a drive-through and became emotional.
A key piece of evidence in the case was testimony from the head poll worker, Mason’s neighbor, who assisted her with filling out the provisional ballot.
The affidavit is poorly designed – it crams an admonition in both English and Spanish in relatively small print on one side, and requires the voter to fill out information on the other.
Alison Grinter Allen, one of her lawyers, said: “Crystal has gone through so much, and all of Texas owes her a great debt of gratitude.
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